English Language - Ethnicity

Le Page and Tabouret-Keller in Acts of Identity

“With every speech, all individuals preform” “an act of identity” “people also have powerful (if unconscious) stereotypes about the norms and standards of their own language and those of others”

Creole languages

A blend of two or more different languages that were simplified in order to combine them (often due to colonialism)

Jamaican Patois

-a 500-year-old creole language created from British colonialism and is inexplicably linked to the slave trade

-many Jamaican Patois speakers don't speak it with non-Patoi speakers due to it being rude (but also may be an affect of post-colonialism)

Jamaican Patois - Examples

Mi = I

Im = he

Shi = she

Dem = they

Stush = posh

Verbs not always marked for tense and sometimes may even be ommitted all together

Viv Edwards - Summary

-in 1986, she did research into when and how Jamaicans in the UK use Patois or English

Viv Edwards - Method (Some of the things she examined)

-Dentals - them/dem

-Vowels - run/ron

-3rd person singular present tense e.g. Bubbles eats a lot/Bubbles eat a lot

-Plural - all the books/all di book

-1st person singular pronoun - I feel happy/mi feel happy

Viv Edwards - Method (Group)

-had a group of Jamacian-descent people who were put in different scenarios:

1) Formal interview with a older white researcher and smartly dressed

4) Discussion by black peer group

5) Informal conversation with black fieldworker

Viv Edwards - Findings

-Edwards calculated a Patois index - an aggregate of the use of Patois vs English

-Use of Patois was always below 50%

-Use of it is sensitive to ethnicity, age and topic of participants

Viv Edwards - Criticisms

-only one group, not repeated with other groups → non-representable of entire Jamaican Patois speakers

Context - Migration

-Large scale arrival of Caribbean people in the UK from the late 1940s forward → Wind Rush Generation

→ due to this new forms of English started to be heard in many urban areas

MLE (Multicultural London English)

-emerged in the late 20th century

-seen as replacing Cockney

-combines elements of Cockney, West Indian languages and African languages

-not all MLE sound the same

MLE - Speakers

-used to be mainly spoken by young working class or middle class mimicking working class people in multicultural parts of London but has turned into a sociolect which people all around the country speaking it, mostly in urban areas

MLE - Stereotypes of speakers

anti social, gangster, intimidating, uneducated, uncivilised

MLE - Other Names

-also known as Jafaican (psuedo-Jamaican) by some, but researchers from Lancaster University believe it is not people who are white trying to be black, but rather young people who are exposed to different varieties of English as they grow up and who incorporate different influences into their speech

Features of MLE - Pronouncation

-TH fronting

-H dropping

-Shift of some vowels to the back of the mouth

Features of MLE - Grammar

-’dem’ as a plural marker (e.g. “man dem” for men)

-'man’ as a 1st and 3rd person pronoun

Features of MLE - Vocab

-Bare: Lots of

-Beef: Having a disagreement

-Bruv: Bro/Dude, either used for familiarity, judgement, or disrespect

-'This is me’ as a quotative e.g “I was talking to John, and this is me:”

AAVE (African-American Vernacular English)

-mostly spoken by working class and middle class African Americans

-Internet slang heavily borrows from AAVE which has been accused of being cultural appropriation

Gary Ives (2014) - South London Answers

Majority of the students chose to talk about words and phrases they felt “set them apart” from other areas of the country

Examples:

Bare - Lots of (Afro-Caribbean slang for “Totally”)

Calm - Good, anything positive

Hype - Getting excited e.g. she's hyping

Several subjects of this case study were white British teenagers → language being synomous with group identity regardless of ethnicity or cultural background

Sue Fox

-studied the speech patterns of a sample of teenagers with widely different ethnicities across London

-results: they all used basically the same dialect

-concluded that “young people” “growing up in London” had been “exposed to a mixture of second-language English” and a bunch of other ones, which created this new variety of English

Appropriacy

Whether or not a word, accent, tone, etc is seen as suitable for the context it is being used in

Case Study - Gerrard McClendon - Summary

-In 2004, published a book “Ax or Ask? The African American Guide to Better English”

Case Study - Gerrard McClendon Interview, 2007 - Positives of BAE

-says that BAE is a cultural aspect of identity, not just a sociolect, and refers to it as a “the sweet language”

Case Study - Gerrard McClendon Interview, 2007 - Code Switching

-states that though Black American English (BAE) is beautiful, it should not be used in formal, business contexts

-Black Americans should learn to code switch, because white people will think of them as lesser otherwise and that they are already disadvantaged by being Black.

-states that in “a mixed environment”, Black Americans shouldn't speak BAE, which suggests assimilation and that Black people are the problem, not white people

Case Study - Gerrard McClendon Interview, 2007 - Features of BAE that limits Black Americans

“Ax” instead of “Ask” → says that teachers should correct this so Black Americans don't fail in the business world → enabling prescriptivism

-Misusing the word “be” → don't use the other forms of “be” e.g. uses “be” instead of “are”

Case Study - Gerrard McClendon Interview, 2007 - Standard English and Black Children

-says that Black children fear speaking Standard English due to being judged and bullied for acting “white” → this is stupid in his eyes